The True Mobile Payment Revolution: The Customer Satisfied.
When Mobile Payments application news began popping up all over the Internet with the simplistic view that just installing an app or a card reader adapter into an I Phone or Android creates a viable, secure mobile payment solution, it was much the same as thinking that having a label stuck inside the battery compartment of cell phone with a RFID chip turns it into a mobile payments device.
Most of the mobile payments solutions out there are far too simplistic, and worse, have totally disregard for patents pending and intellectual propriety rights that were established years ago, and whose software remains part of solutions that are undergoing careful and structured deployment.
But, then again just take the magnetic stripe on the back of most credit cards. Any of today's apps are certainly light years ahead in terms of the security. But business is a multi-dimensional thing, and therefore, all its dimensions have to be taken into account.
Mobile payments solutions are certainly getting a lot of attention from established institutions, creating the "mobile payment" revolution that is going on right now. However, contrary to popular understanding, it is not being driven by the mobile (the device in the hands of billions of people), yet; in the United States.
In the United States, the conversation about the mobile payments revolution is still mostly about the interchange fees charged by the credit card companies to process payments. While in much of the world, especially in the developing countries, the conversation is about adding real value to end users and businesses.
The telecom companies obviously want a piece of the pie since they most often supply the mobile telephone and its connectivity, and usually have a direct relationship the mobile phone manufacturer. Of Course, the credit card companies and the banks, as providers of the currency of exchange that makes mobile payments work, see it quite differently.
Of course, big retailers, as the providers sellers of the majority of the goods that consumers will use their mobile payments currency to purchase, see themselves as having the largest interest in the mobile payments revolution, and, as a result, have begun to press the credit card and banking companies to lower their transaction fees, even if that represents to really totally losing their business focus at a time they cannot afford it. Cost reduction is one thing; destroying their business by losing the focus is really insane.
The true mobile payment revolution is going on silently, almost underground, and it will quite literally explode in the face of these people, if they do not get they act together. It is too big an opportunity to be ignored. Those who do not act now, will, quite literally, miss the boat.
The opportunity to create a true global payment solution that enables business (financial and non-financial), telecom companies, governments, and most importantly the users of these services, to really benefit from this innovation, is right here now; and we can lead that effort.
In the end, more money will be made for everyone, and as always, financial institutions and big businesses (including the telecoms) will make more money than ever with the new way of doing business. They just need to embrace it, and tap into its true potential right now!
